


Hidden

by JulyStorms



Series: Fragmented [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2213037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi is really not so different from the others in the Corps. He hides, too. It's just that he goes about it a different way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t remember what my original intent for this was. I might have abandoned the idea (whatever it was) entirely.

The barracks are full of young men and women, many of them fresh from training. There are only ever a handful of people around who could pass for over-thirty, and Levi wonders if any of them realize it’s a waste of time to bare your soul to people who are probably going to die, anyway, because all anyone ever seems to do is form attachments.

Or maybe they already know one another well enough from training that it’s too late; they’ve said too much. They might as well continue on in the same way.

He feels some measure of pity for them.

When people die, as they tend to do in the Survey Corps, the ones forming attachments are left weeping in the corridors. The weaker people stick to the showers; they hide behind the spray of cool water and pretend that they feel nothing at all.

Despite this, they don’t learn. Too many of them continue to ignore the dangers of emotional attachment or so-called pleasant physical contact.

Levi likes to think he’s better than that—better than hiding, better than crying, better than all of these stupid people who share too much and are full of sob stories whether they started out that way or not.

But he’s not. He’s the same as they are, deep down: he just doesn’t show it as readily. Instead of crying in the cold showers he paces his room from the desk to the opposite corner and back again, over and over until Hange knocks on his door and tells him to at least take his boots off if he’s going to pace the rest of the night.

He manages a frown but then she’s there, gathering him up into her arms, and he’s telling her to get the fuck off of him—“I’m serious, shitty-glasses!”—because he can’t have this.

He just can’t.

But she does it anyway, starts to break him like a pillar; if she chips away enough, if she makes him comfortable with things, if she touches him just enough, smiles at him every day, says his name as if he matters a certain amount of times—he’ll crumble; he’ll fall.

And maybe for a while it’ll be nice.

Maybe for a few days or months or years they’ll be happy. They’ll share a bed and they’ll share secrets and they’ll learn every single thing about the other that they possibly can.

But it all ends eventually.

It always does. Levi’s seen it too many times to ever think otherwise.

And he’s not hiding in the cold spray of the shower but he’s hiding in his own way. Losing another person he’s dared to let himself care about, losing another person he’d do just about anything for, losing someone he _loves_ —he can’t fucking handle that.

He takes comfort in the fact that there’s something there between them: he and Hange. Possibilities, perhaps. It’s nice to know that if things were different, if he wasn’t so stubborn, if she wasn’t so busy, if they were both doing all right and the world wasn’t in shambles—that she’d be there, maybe waiting for him with that dopey smile on her face like she’s discovered something new and exciting.

Hange lets him go, pushes her messy bangs back from her face and looks a bit ashamed. “Sorry,” she says. “I just wanted…”

Levi makes himself look at her. “Just…don’t.” He says it as gently as he can. There is a part of him that doesn’t mind being touched, a part of him that craves affection and attention from another human being; there’s a part of him that wants to hold her, too.

But it’s the rest of him that wins out. It’s the boy who’s suffered too much, it’s the man that knows attachment is stupid because it is fleeting.

Hange nods, tells him she understands.

The worst and best part of it all is, he decides, that she does understand. She knows exactly what he means, what he’s thinking. She knows him too well and he’s never purposefully let her in at all. She gets him. He supposes he can take comfort in that. In a really stupid, twisted sort of way, he loves her for it—for intuitively understanding him.

It’s further proof that if things were not as they are, that they might be spending this night breathing the same air, taking refuge in each other by some definition, in some capacity.

But reality is cruel and they are both too smart for that. Neither of them wishes to be the one left behind, the one crying in the corridor or hiding in the showers pretending they haven’t lost anything precious.

Hange doesn’t wish him a good night. She knows he won’t sleep. She just leaves him there, shirt a little rumpled from her half-attempt at a hug, and closes his door behind her. A moment later, he can hear her close the door to her own room next door. He resumes his pacing, this time without his boots.

 

 


End file.
